Outhouses bring out the best in overnight guests ~ October 17,1985

David Heiller

There’s always a bit of adventure when friends and relatives come to visit at our house, often thanks to not having an indoor bathroom.

I’ve gotten used to the privvy, but city-dwellers especially seem to put the walk to the outhouse in the same category as a trip through the jungles of the Amazon.

The bane of many guests at our house
 in those days: The Outhouse.

Take this past weekend, for example. On Saturday morning, my mother-in-law arrived for a two-day visit. She sat down at the kitchen table and announced, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Most 53-year-old women don’t proclaim such things at the kitchen table. But at our house such announcements are often made by guests, because our bathroom is a two-seater about 20 yards from the house. By stating her intentions, my mother-in-law was working up the courage to actually pay her visit.

An hour later, still sitting at the kitchen table and two cups of coffee further along, she announced again, “Well, I guess I’ll go to the bathroom.”

“I thought you said that an hour ago,” I said.

“Yes, I did,” she answered, not moving.

Sometime that afternoon—I never did see her leave—she made the trip, and survived. That’s a sidelight to the main story here. You see, for the weak of heart—or bladder—we have a chamber pot, one which my wife gives up for a night as an age-old gesture of hospitality when company dares sleep over. Cindy dutifully offered the chamber pot to her mother, who almost grabbed it out of her hands, as the thought of stumbling outside in 30-degree night darkness sank in.

These two are what got my mom to even consider 
a visit to our VERY humble abode.

I arose early Sunday morning at about 5 a.m. to get a bottle for our son, and walked past mom’s sleeping form, on the hide-a-bed in the living room. I heard the cat outside. She’s been catching a mouse nearly every morning in our living room, so I let her in.

An hour later, I got up again, to light a fire in the wood stove. As I entered the living room, there sat Lorely, at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. Seeing her up on a Sunday morning at that hour is like seeing the sun rise at two in the afternoon. Darned near unheard of.

“What are you doing up?” I asked.

“That cat of yours caught a mouse.” She gestured to a dead mouse, in front of the stove, which the cat had proudly laid out for all to admire.

“That’s good,” I said. “When did she catch it?”

“Just now.”

“And it woke you up?” I asked.

“Woke me up?” she asked. “I was sitting on the chamber pot when it happened.”

Now I could understand why she was so wide awake.

My mother was not a cat person, but she and
 Miss Emma became the best of friends.

“I was just sitting there; and the cat crouched over there, and then this mouse ran in front of me, and...”

Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t finish. The outhouse was bad enough, and even inside, there was no safe haven for bodily functions.

That night, I asked Lorely if she felt up to the mouse challenge again. Cindy butted in: “Mom, maybe you’d like to sleep in our bed upstairs? We’ll sleep on the hide-a-bed. You wouldn’t mind, would you, David?”

I had slept on our hide-a-bed once before, and was still recovering from the back pain. “Well, we’ve had mice upstairs,” I said cautiously.

“When?” Cindy demanded.

“Why just the other day. In fact, it was so big, it might have been a rat, I’m not sure.”

Cindy’s mom looked at me, actually looked through me. Her eyes flashed back on a mouse in front of her as she squatted helplessly in dim morning light. “Do cats eat mice on beds?” she asked.

“Go ahead, sleep in our bed, I don’t mind,” I said.

Lorely slept a sound, mouse-less sleep on Sunday. I woke up feeling like a piece of rebar was holding my back in place.

People tell me I should put a toilet in our house. Maybe they’re right. But even a sore back is worth the adventure that comes with our outhouse. 

Take a walk in the woods—and soon! ~ October 4, 1990

David Heiller

If you’ve got a spare hour or a spare day, take a walk in the woods, and do it soon. Our family tramped around Banning State Park on Monday of this week. Cindy’s sister, Nancy, had been looking after Mollie, so she packed a lunch and we met at Banning for a picnic and hike.

We spread tuna fish on crackers and cut up a couple of homegrown tomatoes and had a meal that fit the day like a glove, pretty and simple and good for you.

Then we hiked, following the Kettle River south toward Sandstone. Other people had the same idea. Usually Banning is deserted during the week, but not last Monday. We saw a young man sleeping on a picnic table, using his knapsack as a pillow and using the sun as a blanket. We pulled over as another guy met us coming up a narrow, rocky trail. We saw several couples, young and old.

The sun moved in and out from its skirt of cotton clouds. When it shone, it warmed us like toast, and when it didn’t we walked a bit faster to keep the chill away. Mostly it shone, and soon Nancy and Mollie had handed their coats to Cindy to carry.

A different hike in Banning:
 Nancy watching Noah and Malika enjoy the park.

Underfoot, maple and poplar and birch leaves had created a bright walkway of yellow and red, some bright red like candy, others mottled with yellow, as if someone had poured on a bit of yellow paint before the red had dried.

Above, the leaves filtered the sun into a warm yellow glow. The air had that fall smell, dry and crackling, of leaves on the ground and vegetation that is turning in for the winter: A smell of squirrel hunting from my younger days.

We found a cluster of four pine cones on the ground from a Norway pine, with needles still attached. “Noah can bring it to show and tell,” I said, handing it to Cindy, the official carrier of things. He’s been bringing things like that for the past week to his first grade class.

Noah was in school while we walked, and I thought how much he would be enjoying this. Not that he doesn’t like school, but he’s chafing a bit from the daily schedule and he would take a hike in the park any day, as would most kids, and most teachers. Unfortunately, life isn’t that logical.

Mollie has a year of freedom left, every other day at least, and we all made the most of it on Monday. She led us on, wanting to take every spur she discovered to the edge of the river so she could toss in the “sparkly” rocks she’d found.

Mollie likes to edge close to any sheer drop-off that will scare us. She knows, like all five-year-olds, what makes Mom and Dad nervous. And how do you as a parent try to act nonchalant as your daughter stands on the lip of a rock that is 30 feet straight above one of the most dangerous rivers in Minnesota? Let’s just say that we held her hand a lot.

We saw a lot of beauty on the trip, us and the others who meandered along the Banning trails on a sunny October morning. The trip made our day. And later that night, as I drove home from a school board meeting, I found myself grinning again, feeling the sun, smelling the leaves.

That’s what parks and fall and families are all about.

The end of a giant friend ~ October 15, 1987

David Heiller

We lost a friend on Saturday, a century old friend that we have known for the past six years.

When we moved to our homestead in May, 1981, this friend welcomed us. He stood erect to the southwest of the house, leaning over the house towering above us, a full 70 feet. He made us feel at home, just as he made the family of orioles feel at home in their swaying nest our first two summers here. Orioles love elm trees.

After the elm was felled, it started snowing.  
Noah grabbed an umbrella and played 
jack-in-the-box in the hollow stump. 
The hollow stump held flowers for many 
years before that too, had to be removed.

But the next year, 1984, the orioles did not return. Our elm tree showed us why. A few of the outer limbs had turned brown in June, their leaves shriveling too early in the summer.

The orioles weren’t taking any chances. Dutch elm disease had arrived.

Still, for the next two summers, the elm stood in its place. It shaded our house so well in the summer that even the scorchers of July wouldn’t get our home hot. The inside temperature never rose to 80 degrees. And less fretful birds, like rose breasted grosbeaks, weren’t afraid to pass through and rest in the high branches of the American elm.

The kids didn’t mind the withering limbs either. I tied a heavy rope onto the lowest branch, using an 18-foot section of extension ladder. Like most projects I construct, the swing swung in a cock-eyed pattern. I had tied the two rope ends to the same branch, one about a foot higher than the other, so that no matter how carefully you started your ride at the bottom, by the second or third swing up, you would ride sideways, and have to hop off to avoid the heavy elm trunk. A trunk that is 37 inches in diameter, and 10 feet, four inches in circumference, can’t get out of the way.

By last summer, only one branch leafed out on the mighty elm. When the rope on the swing broke, I raised the ladder again, and took it down. No point in putting up a new one.

Deane and Kathryn, masters of  their trades.
Many wonderful things at our homestead
would never have happened 
(or happened so well) without the aid of the Hillbrands!

Last Saturday afternoon, Deane Hillbrand and his brother, Steve, came ever to cut the tree down. It had dropped some of its smaller branches on our house during the summer thunderstorms. One of its main limbs would have flattened our house.

Deane brought along one of his Stihl chainsaws, with a 20-inch bar. Deane builds log homes for a living. His chainsaws cut like butter knives. His eye for a cut is usually perfect. He can, (and has), built homes without using a single nail. He thought he could drop the elm tree to the southwest, even though it leaned to the northeast, over our house. Cindy and I trusted Deane.

Steven climbed up the tree, and attached a chain around one of the two main limbs of the tree. To this chain he attached another chain, plus a 75-foot cable. We attached the chain to a stump in the garden, with a come-a-long link to pull and steer the elm. We attached the cable to Steve’s truck, which we parked farther out in the garden.

Deane eyed the elm for several minutes, then made his notch cut.

“It’s hollow,” he yelled as he hit into the center part of trunk. Large chunks of rotten wood flew out from the chainsaw.

Steve looked worried, as he tightened the come-a-long. He stood in the path of the elm, 50 feet away. The hollow center would make the cutting more difficult. There wasn’t much of a hinge for the tree to fall on.

Deane went to work on the other side. He cut in one side, then the other. He pounded wedges that he had made from two by six boards into the cut. Steve pulled tighter. I popped the truck into gear. I could see light through the hollow trunk, where Deane had cut. Only a narrow band of wood on either side of the center kept the elm standing. Deane pounded more on the wedges, used his saw a little more on each side.

Another woods-y adventure with Dean, Kathryn and 
Steve, along with our kids and Steve's daughter Leah. 
(and Joey too)

“Is it coming any?” Steve called. His voice had an edge to it.

“About an inch and a half,” Deane hollered back.

Steve smiled at me. “It’s come an inch and a half,” he repeated, even though I had heard Deane too.

Deane made his final cut, and Steve nodded firmly to me to get the truck in gear and keep going. He cranked the come-a-long, the handle now turning with a click-click-click. The elm swayed, and Steve ran, and I drove the truck out of the garden as the earth shook and trembled with the fallen giant.

Sure enough, the tree’s core was hollow for a good 14 inches across. Steve’s kids and our kids climbed onto the branches, while Cindy and I stood back and marveled at Deane’s skill. Everyone had held their breath, except Deane.

We’ve already started cutting up the elm. The hollow trunk will make a nice pot for geraniums. The wood has warmed our house the past few nights. It is perfectly seasoned for burning. The elm will keep us warm this winter. That’s a good feeling, to know the elm tree that kept us so cool in the hot summer will I keep us warm this winter.

But we sure will miss that tree. It was a good friend.

Tomorrow is such a long time ~ October 5, 1989

David Heiller

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death...

Macbeth spoke those words at the end of a bitter life of power and betrayal. And now they are coming back to haunt me through the words of my four-year-old daughter.

Mollie hasn’t started reading Shakespeare yet. She’s not even reading Olga Da Polga, although she listens to Cindy read it every night at bedtime.

But on the subject of “tomorrow”, she can keep up with Bill Shakespeare just fine, thank you.

It usually starts the previous night, when we are saying goodnight, lying in her bed. Mollie starts by seeking promises.

“Can I wear my heart dress tomorrow?” she’ll ask.

“Uh-huh,” I’ll answer in a dull voice. Mollie has a way of wearing your voice down to a dull edge by seven in the evening.

If it is real dull, she’ll move boldly on: “Can I go to Day Care tomorrow?” Uh-huh. “Can I stay at Bobby-Jo’s house tomorrow?” Uh-huh. “Can I have the keys to the car tomorrow?” Uh-huh.

Then the next day she calls us due: “Is it tomorrow?” she starts. And we answer with a cruel grins, “No, it’s today.”

Monday morning she sat down to her bowl of oatmeal and asked, “Is it tomorrow?”

Cindy answered while brushing Mollie’s hair into a pony tail: “Today is Monday, tomorrow is Tuesday.”

“Is it tomorrow today?” Mollie persisted. “When it’s Tuesday, it will be today,” Cindy said.

If we do two ponies tomorrow, when will that be?

“And tomorrow will be Wednesday,” Noah said, trying to be helpful. “Today is Monday, yesterday was Sunday, tomorrow will be Tuesday.” Noah has the grinding patience of a six-year-old.

“Tomorrow do two ponies,” Mollie instructed Cindy the Hair Fixer.

“What day is tomorrow?” Cindy tested. “I don’t know, the other day,” Mollie answered.

“When you go to sleep, then after that’s it’s a different day,” Noah tried. “But always the same year.”

By this time, even I was getting confused, and we changed the subject. But I thought about it all day Monday. When does a kid learn what “tomorrow” means? How do you explain it? You can try, but what’s the point, I thought. Sooner or later, you get it.

Maybe that’s why Shakespeare, Dylan, and every poet on down to bottom-feeding newspaper editors like to write about “tomorrow”.

I had a similar problem when I was her age. I remember asking my brother, “If Brownsville is in Minnesota, what state is Minnesota in?”

Explaining tomorrow will make you 
feel as though you are up a tree.

He should have answered, “Not a very good one,” but he gave me some answer like Noah gave Mollie, and I didn’t understand, until one day, I just knew it. A miracle.

On Monday night, I tried to probe Mollie further. We sat in the living room after supper. A warm fire crackled in the woodstove. Mollie was lying on the floor, drawing pictures with a pen in a yellow, legal notepad. One picture per page, a few circles and the picture is done. We go through a lot of legal pads at our house.

“What is ‘tomorrow’?” I asked. I was referring to the concept.

“Tomorrow is Tuesday,” she answered. “Tomorrow is Tuesday?”

“Un-huh.”

She crawled onto my lap and showed me her picture, some circles and lines with two smudges in the middle.

“What are those?” I asked, pointing to the ink spots.

“Belly buttons,” she said with a sly laugh.

“You can’t have two belly buttons,” I said.

“No, this is a belly button and this is an owie,” the Quick Thinker responded.

So much for my probe. How do you comprehend logic like that?

I’ll figure it out tomorrow.

This transformation is anything but holy ~ October 16, 1986

by David Heiller

The Transformation began about two months ago. This Transformation has a capital T, but it is anything but holy. Diabolical might be a better description.

I was attempting to put a 10-foot piece of roll roofing onto the garden shed, in a pretty stiff breeze. With my carpentry and coordination, that is a two person job. There were two, of us, but one was my daughter, Malika. Being only 14 months old, she didn’t count.

Not much scared Malika.

I rode that roll roofing like a magic carpet a top the garden shed, trying to keep an eye on Mollie, who was playing on the swing-set. As I put one nail in place, the wind lifted the other end out of place. I turned around to nail it straight, glancing toward the swing-set for the kid. She was gone. That didn’t worry me, since the only real danger at our house is the county road at the end of the driveway, and I had a clear view of that. So I concentrated on the rolling roof.

As I nailed it into place, I glanced at the ladder onto the eight-foot-high roof. A movement caught my eye. Malika’s head rose above the edge of the roof, smiling like some proud sun. Then she froze. She was at the top rung, unable to advance. She looked down, then back at me with the dumb realization that she was stuck.

I had the same dumb look in my eyes. I couldn’t get down the ladder—only room for one there. I couldn’t lift her up—too steep. I leaped off the roof into tall grass, then came up behind Malika. She was now crying quite freely. The sun had changed to showers in a hurry. I lifted her off the ladder, and we both breathed a big sigh.

That was the Transformation, the start of it. I returned to the roof, and she followed me back up the ladder. We repeated the process, her beaming smile, then sudden fear, my leap to the ground and rescue. This happened three times before I conceded defeat and let the roof keep leaking.

When my wife came home, I told her light-heartedly what that darn Malika had done.

“You were doing what?” she asked. “She did what? You let her climb what? What if she had fallen? Is your roof that important?”

These were all questions I had been avoiding.

“But Mollie wouldn’t stay off the ladder,” I protested. “She’s got a mind of her own now, I tell you. She just kept coming up that ladder. I couldn’t stop her.”

The best way to deal with Malika was some kind of containment plan. A kid-pack worked great!

“Hmmmm,” Cindy said, unpersuaded.

Cindy is still unpersuaded about the ladder incident, but Mollie took the adventure as her cue to enter the real world of childhood independence. All moms and dads who have trod this rugged stretch of parenthood know of which I speak. It’s that time when letters to relatives stop describing the kid innocuously: “And little Joey is such a good baby, always smiling, real easy, not a trouble-maker.”

The letters change to something like this: “Little Joey is sure a little bug. He is always on the go, and likes to keep us hopping.”

If you read between the lines, they are actually saying, “The little so-and-so is a one-baby SWAT team. He makes Rambo look like Liberace. He’s destroying the house and us with it.”

At least that is the way it is at our house, during this Transformation. You do not turn your back on Malika. She has mastered the ascent of every piece of furniture under five feet. That ladder was small potatoes. She stands on the window sill, she sits on the kitchen range. She climbs the stool next to the counter and climbs up to reach the good cupboards. Not the unlocked ones at floor level with boring Tupperware, but the good ones, with the china we never use: She uses it. The kitchen table is her own personal turf, and she spends as much time as possible there. We have to spread all the furniture into the middle of the rooms, so that she can only get stranded. Soon she will learn to leap from one to the other.

Malika love. Everyone needs hugs.

Climbing isn’t the end. She pours milk out of pitchers, onto the table and floor. She pulls pitchers of juice off the counter, down her shirt. Any spare items that fall on the floors, she claims until they tire her, then she throws them into the wood box.

Maybe it is coming to a head though. On Saturday, she stayed in the house with Cindy while I performed the great American autumn ritual of putting on storm windows, I figured if Mollie were outside, she would be at the top, of the 20-foot ladder. I figured if she stayed in the house, we’d all be safe.

I figured wrong.When I’d finished the ladder work, I grabbed the piece of glass for the combination picture window in our living room, and went to put it in. I set it down in the living room, against the stereo, while I took the screen out. As I walked into the kitchen with it, a tremendous crash sounded behind me. Cindy and I jumped and ran into the living room. Mollie stood in the middle of about 200 splinters of glass. She had knocked the window over onto her rocking chair. She wasn’t cut, luckily. She just stood there, looking at us calmly. She didn’t start to cry till we very gently picked her up and deposited her safely in the kitchen. Or as safely as any room can be with her in it.

As I headed to work Monday morning, Mollie followed this fine feat by pulling the lamp off the table, again in the living room, breaking the bulb into another 200 pieces of glass. Cindy and I just looked at each other. I guess we are used to this Transformation. But we can’t wait till the next stage. It’s got to be better than this one.

Sensing a perfect day ~ October 12, 2005

David Heiller

It was one of those fishing moments that don’t come along real often.

I had just brought a big sheepshead to the side of the canoe when something hit my other line. It was even bigger, and the way it fought, heavy and hugging the bottom, I knew it was another sheeper. This one finally surfaced by the first one, and for a few seconds my two rods sliced the air like a conductor at Carnegie Hall. Only this was much nicer than Carnegie Hall.

Both fish ended up in the bottom of the canoe, one 26 inches, the other 21 inches.

Some people aren’t real fond of freshwater drum, which is the fancy name for sheepshead. I like them fine. I want to try smoking some, and these two will work well for that experiment.

Autumn view towards the quarry at Fairy Rock

It It was a fitting end to a fine fall day. The sun was setting on Wisconsin, and the hills stretched to the north, dappled in calico. Brownsville ended the procession, jutting out further than the others. I’ve always liked the looks of those hills. They’ve been landmarks for many people, and they always convey a feeling of security and stability. The rest of the world can be going to heck, in fact it seems to be doing just that these days. But those hills aren’t going anywhere, and for some reason I take reassurance in that.

It’s that way with the river too. I can throw in my canoe and I know there will be fish waiting. I can sense them. My wife wonders why, if I can sense them so well, I don’t sense a few crappies instead of those sheepshead. But that’s not the point. The beauty is in the sensing.

That’s the way it was Sunday night. Further up the river a big flock of geese called to each other. They were settling in for the night, taking refuge in the refuge. Maybe some swans mixed in, some ducks too. It was a good sound to hear. They are noisy cusses, but it was music to my ears. It reminded me of where we are right now, the peak of a beautiful fall.

Another hike, this one in the late fall, early winter.
Alex, Laura, Cindy and Malika.

That peak hit me earlier in the day too. Five of us had hiked down into the Reno Valley. I walked with my nephew Alex and his girlfriend, Laura, while Cindy and her girlfriend, Sara and the dogs took off at a brisk pace ahead of us. (Why do women walk so much faster than men?) We didn’t meet a soul, which surprised, but didn’t disappoint me. The sun cut through the trees, which it couldn’t do just a few weeks ago. Alex pointed out a huge bird circling high over a bluff on our right. Another bluff further on to our left jutted over the valley. A hawk high-tailed it over that bluff, heading south. The area is a major migration route for hawks.

“Does that bluff have a name?” Alex asked.

“Probably,” I answered. I didn’t know it. “It’s too far from my territory?” That’s the way it is. Five miles from home and it’s wilderness in hill country.

Alex pointed out a path coming down the hill. “Deer trail,” I said. He knew that, but I had to sound like I knew something.

We came to a huge oak trunk that had been cut a few years back. I counted the rings, 135.

The mauve bluffs of Wisconsin at sunset.

Laura at some unnoticed point had followed her womanly genes and sped off ahead of us. Now she waited by a fork in the trail to make sure we would find the way that the gals had gone.

“I left a sign on the trail,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you would see it so I waited.”

“Of course we would have seen it,” I said even before I did see it. You have to show confidence on a good hike. She had drawn an arrow in the dirt, about 18 inches long, pointing to the right. I don’t know if I would have seen that. I personally would have used three logs about six feet in length to make an arrow, like Melvin Miller taught us to do in Boy Scouts. But I didn’t tell Laura that. After all, she had waited for us.

We finally caught up with Cindy and Sara, who wondered what the heck had happened to us. Then we proceeded up the hill, a perfect hike on a perfect day followed by perfect fishing in the perfect place that we all call home.

Apples: a favorite fruit and fragrance ~ October 7, 1993

David Heiller

The apple tree has been good to us this year. It’s half-dead and gnarly the way old apple trees look, like a bent old man. But it keeps on giving good fruit year after year. It gives us other pleasures too.

I don’t know what kind of tree it is. It starts bearing fruit by mid-August. A lot of apples go to waste on the ground then. We aren’t ready for them, and they are tart.

But by mid-September the ones that have survived the thunderstorms and climbing kids are big and sweet. The insides are very white. They start to turn brown within a few minutes after you cut them or take a bite.

Tyson and Malika

My daughter Mollie and her friend and I picked the tree three weeks ago. I got out the step ladder, which is old and shaky. One of the kids would climb as high as she could, while I held the ladder, and passed the apples down to the other kid, who put them in a bucket.

It wasn’t the most efficient way to pick apples, but it was fun, especially for the kid on top of the ladder, all stretched out, reaching that extra inch to get chubby fingers around a big red ap­ple. Sometimes I would shake the ladder just a little then, and they would jerk and laugh. We filled two five-gallon buckets. I put them in the sauna, where they stay cool most of the time. They’re just the right temperature. Not so cold they freeze your teeth, like from the refrigerator. And they fill the sauna with the smell of apples, which is a pleasant smell indeed.

Every day we grab a couple apples from the sauna. We take them to work. We eat them while we work in the garden, or on bike rides and walks. They taste real good in the woods on the tractor too, with a sore back and a trailer full of firewood.

It froze hard Friday night, October first: 23 degrees, our thermometer said.
The apples still left on the tree didn’t take it too kindly. Their skin blotched. The insides were no longer such a perfect white. But they were still sweet. So my son Noah and I borrowed an apple picker from a friend on Sunday and picked the few that we couldn’t reach from the ground or the shaky ladder.

Brooks, Noah, Ida and APPLES! 

An apple picker is an interesting invention. It has a wire basket on one end that is half open, with wires over half that stick up like crooked fingers. You hook the apple with these fingers, and the apple falls into the basket. It’s on a handle that has three parts. When you put them together, you can reach up about 12 feet.

I picked the apples from the top of the tree, then lowered the basket to Noah, who put them in a bucket. Some of them weren’t as good as they looked. They had sores and scrapes. They , almost filled a five gallon bucket. I stood in the back of the pickup to get the highest ones. A few we couldn’t reach at all. It’s good to leave some for the birds.

I was pretty proud until I backed the truck over the bucket. Then quite a few of them had even more bumps and bruises. I carried them inside, and set them on the kitchen floor with a sheepish look. Cindy was making bread. She didn’t have a sheepish look. Making apple sauce had been added to her list of Sunday chores. Gee, thanks, Dave.

I spent the next couple hours in the woods, cutting firewood and keeping out of Cindy’s way. It was safer to be around a chainsaw. When I came in the house, the apple sauce was on the stove. Cindy asked me to taste it. She didn’t have to ask twice. I smiled. It was delicious, red and smooth and sweet.

After supper, the kids wanted apple sauce and ice cream for a treat, so Cindy made another batch. This kind was clear and chunky—and delicious. Cindy smiled this time. Hot apple sauce and ice cream is a hard treat to beat. I had a bowl too.

Then Mollie asked for an apple after she had brushed her teeth. Cindy said yes. She figures you can’t go wrong with apples, even after you brush your teeth.

That reminded me of when I was a kid. We always had apples in the house. We kept them in the root cellar. It had a dirt floor and stone walls. Apples seemed to stay fresh there for months. Their smell would hang in the air like perfume, like in the sauna and in our lives.

I’m grateful for the simple pleasures that an apple tree can bring.